Former Houston Mayor Annise Parker and Alberta Assemblymember Michael Connolly to be honored at San Diego’s Harvey Milk Diversity Breakfast
Nearly four decades after his assassination, the legacy of former San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk continues to be felt.
“When I lost my first two elections to Council, I re-watched the documentary on him and re-read his biography,” said former Houston Mayor Annise Parker. “How he dealt with his losses helped me to decide to run again.”
The life and work of Milk, one of the nation’s first openly gay elected officials, will again be celebrated at San Diego’s eighth annual Harvey Milk Diversity Breakfast Thursday, May 19 at the San Diego Bayfront Hilton Hotel.
“We are thrilled to honor former Houston Mayor Annise Parker for her years of service to our community, both as an activist and as an elected official,” said Dr. Delores A. Jacobs, chief executive officer of The San Diego LGBT Community Center. “And having Michael Connolly join us, who was elected last year to the Alberta legislature at the age of 21, honors what we know – that our youth have a significant role to play in the future success of our community. We look forward to hearing from both of them at this year’s event.”
Parker, who will receive the Harvey Milk Lifetime Achievement Award at the event, served as an out lesbian on the Houston City Council, from 1998-2003, as city controller from 2004-2010 and ultimately as mayor of the nation’s fourth largest city from 2010-2016. In 2015, Houston passed a proposition that extended the terms of mayor, city controller and councilmembers to two four-year terms, making Parker the last Houston mayor to be limited to three two-year terms.
As a lesbian activist in the 1970s, Parker remembers attending her first LGBT organizing event in 1975, “So I was aware of [Milk’s] campaign and later, of his election. I was stunned by his death. It was frightening, because I don’t think any of us who were active then didn’t have to face threats, but it was also galvanizing, because we wanted to add meaning to his sacrifice.”
She has most certainly done that. She was Houston’s second female mayor, and one of the first openly gay mayors of a major U.S. city. Parker is the only person in Houston history to hold the offices of councilmember, controller and mayor.
“I was the mayor of a great city. That I was able to be that and still be true to myself was priceless,” she said. “I was not a lesbian elected official, meaning I did not speak for our community or try to advocate for them differently than any other constituent group, but the notoriety allowed me an unparalleled opportunity to raise the profile and status of Houston and show millions of people another example of who we are.”
And Parker showed them exactly who she was. Not just an elected official, not just a lesbian, Parker, a second-generation Houstonian, showed she embraced family as well. She and her wife, Kathy Hubbard married in 2014 after 23 years together. The two have been visible and vocal advocates for adoption, raising four children together. And in 2010, Parker was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine.
Once she became an elected official, Parker even borrowed from one of Harvey Milk’s more visible legislative victories. “I actually cribbed from one of his initiatives to pass Houston’s pet waste ordinance,” she said.
More significantly, Mayor Parker – like Milk had tried during his time as a supervisor – issued one of the most comprehensive non-discrimination orders in the nation, the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), which was passed by the City Council, but when it was challenged by opponents, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the city had to rescind the measure or put it up for a public vote. The measure was put on the November 2015 ballot and was defeated 62-38 percent, and left Parker with a little over a month left in her final term to fight back against the vote as mayor.
“We are winning the war for both hearts and minds and for tangible protections, but we will still lose battles. Houston’s vote was the first item the Right could target after the Supreme Court resolved marriage. Great progress always provokes a backlash,” Parker said.
“But it clearly showed that transgenders are much less known and understood, and the attacks they often endure in life will be amplified at the ballot box and in legislatures in shameful and deceitful campaigns,” she said. “The 50 years we’ve spent showing the face of gay and lesbian America often excluded them, both because sexual orientation and gender identity are different, and because many gays and lesbians were struggling with their own feelings and fears about the issue. And we can’t forget about our brothers and sisters around the world who are decades behind our progress.”
While Parker has years of activism and public service experience, the other special guest at the Harvey Milk Diversity Breakfast was first elected in 2015 at the age of 21. Canadian Michael Connolly currently serves as a member of the Alberta Legislative Assembly, representing the Calgary-Hawkwood district. He is one of the first three openly LGBT people elected to the Alberta legislature, along with caucus colleagues Ricardo Miranda and Estefania Cortes-Vargas.
Connolly serves as deputy chair of the Standing Committee on Private Bills, as a member of the Select Special Ethics and Accountability Committee and the Standing Committee on Alberta’s Economic Future. He studied history and political science in a French immersion program at the University of Ottawa, focusing on European integration, Eurosceptiscism and Scottish politics and nationalism. He also completed an internship with an office of a member of Parliament, and helped organize a forum for young women leaders from all over Canada.
“Although I’ve known of Harvey Milk for many years, it wasn’t until last year, my last year of University, that I really started to research who he was and the movement that he led. However, since being elected, much of what he said has been instrumental to how I represent both my constituents and the LGBTQ community as a whole,” Connolly said.
“In Harvey’s speech to a San Diego dinner of the gay caucus of the California Democratic Council March 10, 1978, Harvey stated, ‘A gay person in office can set a tone, can command respect not only from the larger community, but from the young people in our own community who need both examples and hope.’ This quotation (from the Randy Shilts biography, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk) speaks to how I see my role as one of the first openly gay members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta,” he said.
Connolly said he has felt a deeper connection to Harvey Milk and his legacy since taking office.
“It is difficult not to. Although, I can imagine being an openly LGBTQ+ elected official in 2016 is easier than in the late 1970s, I can attest to the fact that we – the three openly LGBTQ+ members in my caucus – receive hateful messages and death threats related to our sexual identities and gender expressions. However, like Harvey, that only drives us to fight harder for our sisters, brothers and siblings who don’t have the privilege we possess as elected officials,” Connolly said. “Harvey said it best when he stated, ‘If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.’ We fight so that those who will come after us need not to.”
Serving as an out public official has been both meaningful, and challenging, for Connolly.
“By far, the most meaningful part has been speaking with our LGBTQ+ sisters, brothers and siblings of all ages, hearing their stories, and learning what we need to do next to further our rights. When I was first elected, I had a number of individuals come up to me in tears and tell me how happy they were that they finally had someone in our legislature who was like them, who knew what they had been through and what our youth are going through,” he said. “The most challenging part is knowing that I will never be able to accomplish as much as I would like for our community. In Alberta, 40 percent of our homeless youth identifies as LGBTQ+, Alberta’s trans and gender non-conforming people are, like everywhere in the world, constantly under attack by our legal system, other governments and citizens. While I can do my best to make my province more equitable, I will never be able to do as much as I wish.”
Celebrating the life and legacy of Harvey Milk provides the opportunity to think about the legacy of other openly LGBT elected officials, including Parker. She said she hopes her legacy will simply be that, “I took the torch, I raised it high, I passed it on.
“I have lived the arc of changes created by our movement, and they are more than we ever imagined,” she said. “But the most powerful engine of change has always been each of us living with openness and integrity.”
On that notion, Parker and Milk agree. “Every gay person must come out,” Milk said. “As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family. You must tell your relatives. You must tell your friends if indeed they are your friends. You must tell the people you work with. You must tell the people in the stores you shop in. Once they realize that we are indeed their children, that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and all. And once you do, you will feel so much better.”
San Diego’s Harvey Milk Diversity Breakfast began as the vision of Nicole Murray Ramirez, Robert Gleason, The San Diego LGBT Community Center and a coalition of civic and business leaders. It now draws more than 1,100 community leaders each year.
Thursday, May 19, 7:30-9 a.m. at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, 1 Park Blvd. in San Diego. http://events.thecentersd.org/site/Calendar?view=Detail&id=101321
